Present day telephony voice networks, have a network built around circuit switches, end offices, a toll network, tandem switches, and twisted wires. These voice networks are referred to as a public switched telephone network (PSTN) or plain old telephone service (POTS). Due to bandwidth limitations of plain old telephone service (POTS), there is an inherent inability to efficiently integrate multiple types of media such as telephony, data communication for personal computers (PC), and television (TV) broadcasts. Accordingly, a new broadband architecture is required. This new architecture gives rise to a new array of user services.
With respect to toll-free telephone service by which calls to certain numbers are billed to the party being called and not to the calling party, certain inefficiencies of existing “8xx” service can be overcome by the capabilities of an Internet Protocol Telephony system. At least one problem associated with prior art “8xx” service is that costs associated with such service are very often difficult to control as it virtually impossible to control who calls an “800” or other toll-free number.